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was some improvement, but the problem of overlap in the distribution of
public and private tenants remained substantial.

Distribution of working-aged households (household heads aged 20 – 65) by
housing type and by income quartiles

Source: Census and Statistics Department.

3. Divorce and Family Breakdown

The crude divorce rate in Hong Kong was 3.1 per 1,000 people in 2013,
nearly three times higher than that in 1991. This places Hong Kong in the
top ten in the world in divorce. We believe that implicit in the PRH allocation
criteria is an in-built incentive that provides encouragement for unhappy
couples or low-income households to initiate divorce and remarry across
the border. A low-income divorced parent could apply for readmission
to the PRH programme, often with preferential consideration (compared
with being a singleton), if he or she had dependent children or remarried,
since the current PRH allocation criteria favour married couples but do not
discriminate between first marriages and remarriages.

This perverse incentive further tilts the balance in favour of divorce
among low-income families and generates a penalty on children who
inevitably suffer from family breakdown. The growing number of divorced
women living in PRH units implies a rising number of children growing up
in broken families in PRH estates. This is not conducive to upward social
mobility but sets the stage for the production of a new underclass that
perpetuates intergenerational inequality and low social mobility.

4. Intergenerational Mobility and

Poverty

Divorced men and women are heavily concentrated in PRH. It
follows that the PRH estates have become a conglomeration of single
parent households that will have an adversarial effect on a sizeable
number of children. Their development is stunted, causing both income
inequality and poverty.

Hong Kong’s public housing estates are transforming into areas of
concentrated poverty with more children living with a single parent. These
children reside in poor neighbourhoods which might lack good role models

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